I've come to realise lately that whereas when I first got interested in watches I was interested in many different brands, as time has gone on (and notably with the demise of QP magazine a while back) I kind of lost my regular window on the wider watch world and steadily retreated into my own rather TAG-centric universe. Which isn't to say that I lost touch completely, but as one by one I tired of most of the YouTube channels I had regularly watched as they either recycled their content again and again or merely became 'fronts' for retail (and as such lacked any credible 'independence of viewpoint', much like Hodinkee etc - how can you trust people who are selling watches to objectively review them?) so I absorbed less and less non-TAG information.
I decided recently this was probably a bad thing, as even if I didn't want to expand my collection beyond the established limits, just reading articles about other brands and watches was likely to provide inspiration for my own 'Feature' posts. I recently read an interesting article on Quill and Pen (from May 2020 I believe) called 'False Scarcity and Steel Sports Watches: A Collector's View' which once again made me thankful that I don't covet a Rolex Submariner, a Patek Nautilus or a Royal Oak... indeed, it made me think that isn't it nice that you can actually walk into any TAG Heuer boutique and buy a blue dial Monaco Calibre 11 without having to fall to your knees and kiss the salesperson's feet or promise to buy a solid gold Carrera you don't actually want.
I'm sorry we only have these in two-tone, but I can put you on the 'waiting list'.
Well sure you could say that's simply because TAG Heuer is not as 'desirable' as Rolex, Patek and AP, and that's true. But how does one create 'desirability'? Well in the past the best way for a watch company to big itself up was to flex it's horological muscles and over the first ten years or so of this century TAG Heuer did exactly that; producing several 'masterpiece' watches and pushing the boundaries of science and technology in the quest to measure ever smaller increments of time.
Unfortunately, aside from the truly devoted horologist, nobody really cares about any of that stuff anymore. The column inches a brand can garner from making a horological masterpiece pale into absolute insignificance versus getting your watches on the right people's wrists and by the right people I mean 'celebrities' and influencers. So while you could spend an awful lot of time and money developing a new haute horlogerie movement that measures miniscule increments of time, it would be a lot more financially productive to create something that causes a stir on social media and in particular Instagram.
I do wonder how long it will be before Instagram (and whatever replaces it in a few years when the cool kids get fed up with their parents using it) swallows itself and becomes a perpetual cycle of repetition - assuming it isn't already. I mean how many times can you see and 'like' a Patek 5711 before you get tired of looking it? Heaven forbid you might want to post a picture of a Breitling or something equally 'uncool', damn you'd probably lose half your followers!
I recall watching an informative video by Roman Sharf about Instagram once where he said he didn't post photos of Vacheron Constantin any more because they wouldn't get many 'likes' and so it is that the same people ('influencers' we call them, despite the fact that they are seemingly playing the game rather than actually exerting any actual influence) post the same 'cool approved' things in order to get more likes and followers to climb higher up the food chain.
It's at once tiresome and depressing, much like the internet at large which gives the illusion of offering so much 'choice' but actually when it comes down to it just offers many different ways to buy the same damn thing. Just try buying a sofa, if you want a brown one it better be made of leather, and if you want material it better be grey you're after... and as for fakery, never mind watches, I saw a video the other day about a kitchen gadget company who say their products are faked on Amazon within two months of launch (and meanwhile Amazon deny all responsibility, oh we're just a 'marketplace' we can't possibly be expected to take responsibility for the fraudulent goods we make bazillions of dollars from!).
But as another article I read (by Tim Mosso of WatchBox fame) explains, there really is no other explanation for why the '5711' has become so damned desirable. As he points out 'Men unequivocally respond to fashion trends' which means they want the 'right' watch on their wrist, the watch that impresses other people rather than necessarily the watch they truly like (we are talking about the watch buying public at large here rather than genuine watch enthusiasts, I hate having to keep making this distinction but people with money who buy watches are not necessarily watch enthusiasts).
Of course, here we must consider that a certain number of people perhaps only consider watches/brands which are 'en vogue', which is a shame as if they thought outside of the box they could probably secure a higher end watch from an 'off the boil' but still highly respected manufacture like VC for similar money (but this is the difference between a genuine watch enthusiast and someone with money who just wants the cool watch of the moment).
The problem of course with trends is that by their very nature the tide can suddenly change and we've seen the results of that recently; it actually wasn't all that long ago that Vacheron Constantin was a very HOT brand, but fashion is a fickle business. The flip side is that the rise in prices of the Patek 5711 is now unsustainable and so Mr Stern's decision to discontinue the watch with immediate effect (much to the annoyance of those on the waiting list no doubt!) could be seen as a move to try to either prolong the hype or perhaps more likely to underpin the value of the Nautilus before its bubble bursts and takes Patek down into the no-man's-land that VC currently inhabits.
In any case, it gives me just one more reason to appreciate TAG Heuer. Sure there are pieces that are not so available, the super limited edition 50th Anniversary Monacos for example, but that I don't mind. Limited editions are limited editions, that's a whole different kettle of fish than paying 2-3 times the list price for something which is basically a standard model, just because...
Genuinely limited, not artificially scarce!
You know, it's funny, the other day I was watching something about art fraud and it struck me how ridiculous the art world is because a painting's artistic value is of no value whatsoever, the only value is in who it was painted by. Just think about that for a minute. A really poor painting by a well known artist would be worth many, many times the value of a superb painting by a minor artist... and don't we occasionally hear how an old unsigned painting has been found and the experts have to decide whether it was painted by an acknowledged 'master' or by say an apprentice to that same 'master'?
The fact that they inspect it in detail (brush strokes etc) rather than by appraising it aesthetically tells you all you need to know. The 'art' is of no consequence, all that matters is if the 'right' person painted it, and the weight of expectation on the person who has to decide that is immense. What if he declares it not a 'masterwork' and the client takes it to another appraiser who says it is? It seems like part of the problem there is that art is objective, but branding (the name of the artist) allows us all to nod in collective approval...
Oooh look, free postage!
To look at that in a modern context we can see that 'branding' is everything, why else would a Supreme T-shirt be worth £400? The reality is that all 'value' in goods is created by demand, not quality or aesthetics, the only thing that really matters is how many other people want it. Is it any wonder that social media has fanned the flames of hype to ridiculous levels? And of course human nature being what it is, the whole thing perpetuates itself on and on and on. All these other people want it so it must be 'the best', therefore I must have it - regardless of the fact that what you are actually looking at is a £15 T-shirt with a small square of red and white ink on it.
Ah but of course the trick is to make slightly less product than there are people who want to buy it and Supreme are masters of this little game (though how anyone can trust that a pre-owned T-shirt is genuine and worth thousands of pounds is beyond me), you might even say they are the 'Rolex' of the fashion world. All of which makes me incredibly glad that I really don't care what other people think of what's on my T-shirt or indeed my wrist, which today is a 34mm blue and black, fibreglass coated quartz Formula 1 from the late 80s.... instant cool for less than £200!
Anyway, I seemed to have drifted from my original theme... and I've noticed that over the last five years (or maybe more) I seem to have stopped buying magazines altogether. It seems a shame, I used to like reading magazines, but the internet has pretty much messed all that up. What I particularly dislike about that is that online magazines seem to have a disproportionate amount of depesltyendence on their advertisers (which is understandable because the 'readers' are accessing the material for free) and so again they never really give a genuinely unbiased opinion about anything and often reviews are either overly enthusiastic or just bland rewrites of press releases - can you honestly point me to an article by one of these companies that gives a negative review of anything? Not to mention that the watch media we do have is slowly being bought up by the companies who make the products....
Still I guess I still should expose myself to these outlets if only so I know what else is going on outside the wonderful world of TAG Heuer. After all, one can observe without feeling obliged to partake of the Kool Aid...
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